A Change in Roles
by Reesane
Summary: A single act can change the very essence of a war.... AU, after season 4. JxA
1. Prologue: Manipulated

Author's Note:

This story semi-follows the plot of the episode "Fight to the Finish" (second to last), and completely changes the plot of the episode "Echoes"(Last). The idea for this story from a plot twist I had wanted to see by the end of the series, as well as my disappointment in the last two episodes. I thought that it was interesting enough to write into a fanfict.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

Prologue: Manipulated

The inside of the hermitage was nearly silent. The soft but frantic sound of Jeremie typing on his laptop, Yumi's sobbing into Ulrich's shoulder, and the occasional nose blow by William or Odd where the only sounds that could be heard. They where still in shock, still hardly able to understand what had just happened. They had trusted him, helped him, and even tried to reunite him with his daughter….

Only he had used them. One minute, the perfect story-book ending to their adventure was unfolding around them, and then no one knew quite what had happened. Aelita had vanished like smoke in the wind.

Jeremie was the first to break the near silence.

"W-we were fools. We should have seen this coming- The signs were every where!"

Odd, who had been sharing a box of tissues with William, handed a tissue to Jeremie.

Ulrich looked over Yumi. From where Jeremie was sitting he could see the tears trickling down his cheeks, and the large wet spot on the back of Yumi's shirt.

"It's OK. He had us all fooled. You couldn't have possibly known what he was going to do."

The silence returned, only now it was complete. Even the clock, the one that had ticket steadily on the wall for over twenty years, had stopped. The soft rustle of leaves just outside of the window could have been heard if you listen carefully. William, who had been sitting quietly on the edge of the broken couch, cleared some old derbies off of the floor and sat down next to odd. Every one, including William, sat still as they remembered the horrifying turn of events that had occurred only an few hours before.

Coincidentally, that was at the exact same time that the old clock had stopped.


	2. Chapter  1: Fight to the Finish

Chapter 1: Fight to the Finnish

_Earlier that day..._

A brilliant sphere of energy floated in front of her, just beyond the data terminal in sector five. She could see multitudes of colors reflecting off of its surface, layers upon layers of data that flowed and pulsed rhythmically just beneath. Her father always took this form when he appeared on Lyoko. He was risking his life to help them destroy XANA. The plan was simple: He would help Jeremie execute a program, then Jeremie would materialize him and they would live happily ever after.

Right now, things weren't going as planed.

Odd, who had been standing next to her, was abruptly devitalized. Aelita watched in horror as the manta circled around the sphere open fired, lasers hitting their marks with horrifying accuracy. Her actions where instinctive: she tried to fight of the manta, but every time she destroyed one another took its place. Jeremie was shouting something at her, telling her to try and activate the program, even though he knew there wasn't enough power. Two more manta joined the assault.

"Don't hurt him!" She screamed as she flung another energy field, missing her target. The next thing she saw was a brilliant flash of light, and she realized that the sphere had been destroyed.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Then, just as Aelita collapsed into a sobbing heap, a white mist condensed into a recognizable form. A hand reached out and taped the control panel, activating the program to destroy XANA. The energy from Franz Hopper's "death" powered it, propelling thousands of small orbs out of the sector and into the network, which quickly began wiping out all traces of the malevolent program.

Aelita turned around. Behind her stood her father, who was wearing a white and gold jumpsuit with a flowing white cape. He smiled and held out his hand.

"It's alright, dear. You're safe now." He said as her held out his hand.

Aelita smiled and reached forward. Watching with tears of joy in his eye, Jeremie folded both of his hands over the keyboard. William, who was fully awake for the first time in months, wondered where he was as his memories slowly leaked back into his mind. Yumi and Ulrich looked at each other and realized that they had been holding hands. Odd leaned back against the scanner, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

As Aelita reached for her father's hand, a signal fragment of memory stirred in William's mind. A sudden, nasty feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong settled over him.

Aelita smiled as she grasped her father's hand. He returned the smile. A glowing white light surrounded them as Carthage dissolved into nothingness. The sudden lurch in her stomach reminded her of the transporter sphere. She knew that something was wrong. XANA was dead, completely wiped out by the program which Jeremie had labored on for days. Which meant that only one person could possibly be responsible...

"What are you doing?!" was the last thing Jeremie heard Aelita say as she, along with her father, disappeared from Lyoko.

Jeremie stared in disbelief for a few seconds. This wasn't part of the plan. Aelita and Franz were supposed to be stepping out of the scanners right now, ready to move on in their lives. What the hell did Franz think he was doing? Jeremie flexed his finders. _'Time for the apprentice to challenge the master.'_ He hesitated for a moment with his hands poised over the keyboard._'If he's doing something that he doesn't want me to mess up, he's probably got a surprise or two in store for me.'_ He mused. He taped the "H" key. A powerful electrical shock coursed through his body, stopping the beating of his heart. Jeremie's limp body toppled out of his chair.

William was all ready sprinting towards the elevator when a small, almost nonexistent, voice in the back of his mind started urging him to run faster. The steady pounding of footsteps behind him belonged to Ulrich and Yumi. Yumi's feat must have had wings when she caught up to him. He barely had time to press the button before Yumi caught him in a flying tackle.

"Nice try XANA!"

"Gah! Yumi, get off! I know your glad to see me, but don't you think that was a bit excessive?"

"HEY!" A rather miffed looking Ulrich ducked into the elevator. There was an awkward silence. After a moment or so, Yumi blushed and quickly climbed off of William.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

They found Odd desperately trying to give Jeremie CPR when they arrived in the consol room.

"He's not breathing!" Odd gasped. He then resumed trying to give Jeremie CPR.

William rushed to Jeremie's side. The little voice told him to take over. He pushed Odd out of the way and started to give Jeremie CPR. As he struggled to get Jeremie to breathe, a small electrical shock jumped from his hand, restarting Jeremie's heart. A sudden, violent spasm was followed by a series of feeble coughs. William swore he could feel a small presence in the back of his mind let out a sigh of relief. The rest of the gang was now standing around Jeremy, trying to get him to wake up. Jeremie groaned and mumbled something they couldn't make out as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

"We need to get help- Odd, you grab that arm, I'll take this one. Yumi..." Ulrich glared at William, a hint of resentment was in his voice as he said "...William, go and see if you can find Aelita. She has to be around here somewhere."

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

"Is he going to be OK?"

"Yes, but he needs rest. Explain to me again how this happened?"

"We found him like this, sir."

"Jeremie's always mucking around with computers. Maybe that's how he nearly electrocuted himself."

The familiar sounding voices penetrated his mind as he slowly woke up. Jeremie opened his eyes and looked around the room. He was, apparently, in the hospital. His friends where standing outside of the door, attempting to explain to the doctor how he had been electrocuted. That was strange; he felt more like he had been hit by a bus. The last thing he remembered was attempting to run a program to find Aelita-

_'Wait. Aelita's gone? No. No. No!'_

The realization that Aelita was gone, and probably never was going to be found, felt like a wait crushing his chest. The worst part was knowing who was responsible. Disoriented and nauseous, he barely was able to stop himself from throwing up. Franz, not XANA, had taken her away from him. His eyes roiled up into the back of his head as he fainted for the second time in only a few hours.


	3. Chapter 2: Echoes

Author's Note: I've fixed some grammar and time-continuum issues in the last two chapters, and this chapter is a bit longer then the last two. A big thanks goes to everyone who has reviewed so far (and boosted my ego enough for me to write a longer chapter hint hint), and Sithking Zero for betaing this chapter.

Chapter 2: Echoes

Two days.

Two long days of nothing. No beacons, no signals, no disturbances, nothing. Jeremie had been scouring the network no-stop, without any success thus far, since Aelita had diapered. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. A haystack that was the size of Europe and just as complex.

A half full bottle of water and a bag of trail mix sat on one side of his monitor. Normally, Jeremie did not allow food of any kind within five feet of his computer, but after 26 hours without eating or drinking anything, Ulrich and Odd had started brining him food. They had also managed to make an arrangement with Sissi so Jeremie could skip classes.

Jeremie had decided that he didn't want to know what they had had to go through to arrange that.

He reached over to the other side of his monitor and began flipping through the massive, overly stuffed binder that contained all of his information the network was. Correction: the binder beside the monitor contained half of his data on the network. The rest was in an equally large binder that was open on his bed. He looked at the page and sighed. He had already tried sending out a probe to find Aelita's V-DNA, and it hadn't turned up anything promising. Franz hopper was better at hiding himself on the network then Jeremie had thought. Jeremie had spent the last two hours searching for Franz. After all,

where ever he was, so was Aelita. Maybe if he…..

A nock on the door interrupted Jeremie's train of thought. Was that Jim coming to check up on him?

"Hey, Einstein!" No, that wasn't Jim on the other side of the door. That voice was definitely Odd's. Jeremie walked over to the door and unlocked it. Odd and Ulrich where standing outside. They looked a bit worried.

"You look like something's bothering you."

"Have you slept at all? You look like something out of night of the living dead." Odd said as he searched through his pack. He produced a mirror and held it up to Jeremie. Jeremie stared. His eyes where bloodshot and had dark circles around them, his skin looked like rice paper, and his hair was a mess.

"Any progress, Einstein?" Ulrich asked. Judging by the way Jeremie flopped down on his bed and moaned, he hadn't.

"No?" Jeremie groaned again. Definitely not a good sign.

After a few minutes latter both Yumi and William had arrived. Jeremie had decided to try a new strategy: a wild card search to find anything similar to a replica on the net. Knowing Franz, he would have started to re-create a full replica Lyoko elsewhere. There might be a way to use data that had been gathered from one of XANA's Replikas to locate any new ones.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

"You think that it might work?"

Ulrich was skeptical. Even if this program did find her, how would they be able to retrieve Aelita? Jeremie had said they'd worry about it when they had to. For now, Jeremie was taking a nap while his program scoured the network. Ulrich was sitting on his bed, petting Kiwi. Even Kiwi seemed to understand that something was wrong. The usually yappy dog had been oddly quite since Aelita had disappeared.

Odd sighed and looked up from his text book. Ulrich hadn't realized just how distraught Odd was until he had started studying. It was a well know fact amongst his classmates that Odd only studied when he was extremely stressed.

"I don't know. Things have been… different… I can't really say why, but I feel like we have more surprises in store for us. Jeremie's got his work cut out for him, that's for sure."

A loud nock on the door announced the arrival of Sissi. Grimacing like he had just been forced to eat a lime, Ulrich got up and answered the door. Sissy was standing just outside. Ulrich had to admit that she didn't look half bad in the dark blue and purple dress she was wearing. She had pulled her hair back into a braided ponytail, secured with a small dark-blue ribbon. As Ulrich and Sissi walked down the hall hand in hand, Odd stuck his head out the door. After hesitating for a moment, he shouted "Do it for Aelita!" before ducking back into the room. Both Ulrich and Sissi simultaneously shouted "ODD!!!" much to their mutual embarrassment.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

Jeremie was fast asleep in his bed for the first time in over a week. There was no use in watching his program running the search. It would, undoubtedly, take several hours to run. Every now and then he would mumble something and roll over.

Of course, his dreams where interrupted by a sudden, loud beeping. Jeremie's hand hit his alarm clock repeatedly as he tried to stop the noise. His hand abruptly stopped bludgeoning the clock when he realized where the sound was coming from. He practically flew out of his bed to get to his computer. A quick glance at the screen told him all that he needed to know. The search had found… something… but he couldn't tell what it was from this computer.

Jeremie dashed out of his room, burning carpet as he ran. Ulrich heard Jeremie shouting from the bathrooms.

"TO THE FACTORY!"

"Looks like Einstein's finally snapped. Damn. Now I owe Odd 20 euros..." he grumbled as he finished brushing his teeth.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

One hour latter……

"….. Appears to be a guardian of some sort, suspended in the network. I've created a probe to retrieve it, which I will be sending out in a minute. While it isn't Aelita, there is a good chance that it might help us rescue her."

Jeremie had just finished a particularly long-winded explanation of what he had found, how he had found it, why he had missed it the first few hundred tries. Something about a filter he had put on the search protocols or something…. Odd hadn't really understood what Jeremie was saying.

"So what did you find?" Odd asked. He was curios about this "great discovery" that Jeremie had made. How could a guardian help them find Aelita? Odd had a nagging feeling that Jeremie hadn't told them everything yet.

Jeremie grinned. He had been waiting for someone to ask him that question.

"I've found XANA. Or, at least what's left of it."

Everyone else seemed slightly taken back by this.

"How exactly is that good news?" Yumi asked, rather alarmed. Maybe Jeremie had finally lost it.

"We've spent years trying to destroy it, and it's survived, and your happy about it?!" Ulrich shouted.

William was smiling. He obviously thought that this was good for some reason.

Jeremie adjusted his glasses. He'd thought that they would react like this. The best analogy he could think of for this situation would be if Gandalf turned on the fellowship after they had destroyed the ring, and Sauron came back to help them defeat Gandalf.

"First off, XANA is the only, well, _person_ who had defeated Franz Hopper. Ever. It, I mean…. er… Let's just call XANA 'it' until we figure out which gender it prefers…

"Anyway, XANA is badly damaged. I think it pulled itself together into a single form of some sort to escape the program. If we can convince XANA to help us, we may just be able to rescue Aelita. The first step is bringing it safely back to Lyoko." Jeremie taped a key and launched the probe.

"How do you know it's not going to try and kill us all once it wakes up?" Odd looked nervous.

"Like I said, XANA was damaged. I have no idea how it'll react when it realizes we pulled it out of the network. Or if it will even know who we are."

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

'_Why am I moving? I'm not dead, I think. My shelter in this void- no, not void, it's so full of data it overwhelms anything it touches- is disturbed. Something grabs… Taking me where? Did that- Bastard? I have heard humans call their foes that- find me already?_

_No. He would destroy, not take and move someplace. I feel something._

_Pain? _

_No. Not pain. I do not feel in this place._

_Fear?_

_Yessss… Fear. I am afraid.'_

"Whatever you are, don't hurt me."


	4. Chapter 3: Divided We Stagger

AN: Yes, I finally updated!

Chapter 3: Divided We Stagger

This was an unusual day for Yumi. Not that everything day wasn't unusual for her, today just happened to be stranger than usual. She was, at the moment, inside of a large room in Sector Five. On a slightly elevated platform in the center of said room was a Guardian. Not just your garden-variety type, either, but a red Guardian with the eye of XANA on it. Just visible beneath its shimmering, shifting surface was a shapeless black form. Every now and then, when she had her back turned to it of course, Yumi would feel it watching her. She would whip around just in time to see XANA move back into the center of its guardian.

XANA also seemed to be rather talkative, which was not helping her headache.

"William?" It asked her for the umpteenth time. Yumi groaned. They had been careful to not let William on Lyoko since XANA had been retrieved. This near-constant request for William was worrying Jeremie greatly. He had scanned William multiple times for viruses, but nothing seemed to be… different…

"No." She groaned as she turned around to face it. "You might just be playing a trick on us. How do we know you won't just repossess him and try to kill us again? We can't trust you, and you know it. Stop asking."

"Please?" The voice sounded sad. (If a metallic, ringing, grating voice could sound anything other than evil.) Yumi could almost see it giving her Bambi eyes. Almost. It was hard to imagine what Bambi eyes might look on a shapeless blob.

"Well, I've been thinking…." The omnipotent voice of Jeremie boomed overhead. "The last few times XANA decided it would benefit him to help us, Its always upheld his end of the bargain."

"That still doesn't mean its not planning on killing us!!!"

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-():

XANA listened to the argument from inside of its sphere. It was like a cocoon: warm and safe on the inside, and shielded XANA from the many dangers that threatened its frail, weakened form. Compacting itself into a single… thing… had been traumatic for the AI. It was under a great deal of stress. The visual information it was receiving was only coming from a single 360 degree field of vision, as apposed to the many it was more accustomed to.

Out side, the argument was escalating rapidly…

"Aelita's missing! What else are we supposed to do?!" Jeremie had lost his temper. Not that XANA hadn't been expecting that, but not this early. Jeremie must be tearing himself apart over Aelita's abduction, which was also understandable. "Wait for Franz Hopper to realize that we're still alive and try to get rid of us again? Or how about waiting until he tries to take over the world-"

"What, taking over the world isn't that something XANA would do if we gave it half a chance?" Yumi shot XANA a nasty look. "Besides, why would Franz want to take over the world?"

"My creator was- is - a control freak." Offered XANA. Perhaps it could convince them that he wanted to help? Not that that was likely to help its situation, but it couldn't hurt to try.

Both of the humans stopped arguing, and stared at it. Obviously, they hadn't been expecting it to say anything. After a long, awkward silence they, of course, resumed arguing.

XANA quickly gave up trying to listen and settled down to take a nap.

As it slowly became inactive, a single thought slipped into its mind like… um…. a... a knife into a Mellon: When it left the sanctuary of its guardian, what form would it take?

'So many choices, so little time….'

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-():

If looks could kill, William would be deader then dead. Ulrich had managed to catch him alone by the vending machines, right around the time Yumi and Jeremie had been arguing. Now, under normal circumstances, they would have pretended that the other person did not exist. However, Yumi's sudden interest in William had been frustrating Ulrich to no end. It just wasn't fair! Just when he had pecked up enough courage to admit to Yumi that he not only liked her, but that he liked her a lot, that jerk had to swoop in and ask her out. Now, she spent almost all of her time with William.

This was why Ulrich was mere seconds away from throttling William.

"You think you can just waltz back into the group and take Yumi?" Ulrich shouted as he lunged at William.

"If Yumi wants to hang out with me, there's nothing you can do about it. Bug off." William snapped as he sidestepped Ulrich. Before he knew what hit him, Ulrich had grabbed a hold of his leg and had yanked his feet out from under him.

The fight was, of course, short lived. Jim heard the shouting while he was doing something that he'd "Rather not talk about" and hauled both of their butts off to the principal's office. Now they stood in front of Mr. Delmas, fidgeting and twitching like two small, yappy dogs who had just been slapped for misbehaving.

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

The sun shined brightly outside his window. '_The calm before the storm.'_ In only a few minutes, he was going to have to make one of the calls that he dreaded making. Now, you see, calling Mr. Dunbar had never been a problem. They would talk it out calmly, maybe settle on some punishment (usually a few hours of detention) then life moved on.

Mr. Stern, on the other hand, was an entirely different person. A single call was enough to bring him down upon the school like one of the four riders of the apocalypse. As his secretary would warn visitors at the time of one of Mr. Stern's unscheduled "visits", the last thing you wanted to do was anger him. You could hear him shouting all across the campus, it was said. Better hurry up and get this over with…..

"Now, you both know why you're here." Oh, how original. Wasn't this the fifth time he had said that this week? Mr. Delmas mentally slapped himself. _'Spit it out, get it over with.'_ "Mr. Morales told me that you had a fight. Is this true?"

"Yes." They both mumbled.

"So you both admit to being in a fight? Good. Would you be willing to tell me who started it?"

"I did."

It took Ulrich a few moments to recover from the shock. Had William just saved him from, well, something he'd rather not think about?

William gave him an apologetic look before he launched into a convincing tale about how he ran into Ulrich in front of the drink machines and had gotten into a fight over a few CDs he had lent Ulrich.

"Thank you for your honesty, William, but I still will have to call both of your parents if either of you break any more of the rules. Understood?"

:-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-:

Snow drifted down outside of her window like feathers, blissfully floating down, down, down to the hard ground where they created a blanket of soft, cold numbness. This world she was in was both paradise and prison. Her mother- no, the replica of her mother- was making waffles and hot coco downstairs. A simple piano melody quietly drifted into her room. It was like she was reliving her favorite childhood memories.

Essentially, what her father had been forcing her to do for the past several days.

As the snow kept on falling in this simulated world, Aelita watched the shimmering horizon as she waited for help to come.


	5. Chapter 4: Nightmares

**AN: Hey, I'm alive! I've final gotten around to updating, despite several months of writers block and D&D!**

**I'd like to thank Lidraen for betaing this time, she's done a wonderful job by helping me out with this story.**

Chapter 4: Nightmare

What to wear, what to wear… Choosing a physical form was proving to be surprisingly difficult. XANA had already made itself a rough humanoid form, with two arms, two legs and a head in about the same proportions as Jeremie. Jeremie's form was so fun to use…. But it needed a form of its own now, an identity of its own.

There was a very difficult decision it would have to make before it could proceed any further. A single discussion that would not only affect its appearance, but would determine many of the ways it interacted with the humans.

_'Heh. Jeremy said that I was an "it" until they determined what gender I was...'_

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

Sleep did not come easily to Jeremie that night. After an hour of catching up with his school work (He hadn't been to class in four days, but that was not a problem.) he was starting to doubt the wisdom of bringing XANA back. The argument with Yumi playing over and over and over again inside of his head like an audio file on loop, keeping him awake.. Each point she had made seemed to boar into his mind, relentlessly tormenting him with every memory of the destruction XANA had caused in the past. He rolled over and opened his eyes.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

The desk on the far side of the room seamed to melt, along with his computers, into the wall. Jeremie felt his mattress sag and slide out from beneath him before it dissolved into the glowing floor. The walls them selves, now barren like the rest of the room, melted as if they where made of candle wax. Jeremie cautiously stood up. The walls where cool to the touch, great blobs of material running beneath his hand instead of over it.

His PJs grew strangely cold as they began to reshape themselves around his body.

Jeremie looked over the jump suit he found himself wearing. It was vaguely similar to his Lyoko outfit, with the same shades blue and green in about the same places. When he looked up again, the walls had fallen away to revel a landscape that was as strange and beautiful as it was bleak.

As far as he could see there was nothing but a flat, featureless plane. The ground beneath his feat glowed softly; the sky over his head was as dark as a starless and moonless night. Off in the distance, just barley visible, where a cluster of lights floating out in space.

'_It's the only thing I can do.'_, Jeremie reassured himself as he began to jog towards the lights. 'Besides, whatever this place is, it's freezing.'

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

Jeremie found himself standing at the base of a imposing tower, as black as the sky and at least 40 stories tall. The floating lights he had seen earlier were windows in the massive structure. There was a door in front of him. At least, he though there was; he had the impression that there was something set into the side of the tower there. He reached forward and placed his hand firmly where he though the door was. Within moments the door had melted away, leaving nothing but a glowing opening in the side of the tower. After taking a deep breath, Jeremie stepped inside.

After exploring empty room after empty room and climbing many flights of stairs, he reached the top of the tower. He was in a large, cylindrical room. He could see what looked like data terminals lining the walls, and when he looked up he could see a high, domed ceiling. However, Jeremie's attention was drawn to the center of the room and the large, writhing black mass at the center.

"What is that?" Jeremie cried out in allarm as he stared at the shadow.

I am what you fear.

Jeremie took a step back.

_**I am what you have known since the beginning.**_

The shadow vanished, revealing Franz Hopper. Except something was perversely wrong with his appearance: Franz's skin was grey and glowing with light from embedded chips and wires which coiled through his flesh, one of his eyes had been replaced with a cybernetic orb slightly too large for the socket, and, worst of all, the tips of his finger had been replaced with razor sharp metal claws.

Franz smiled, revealing yellowing fangs.

_**I am what you will become…**_

Agonizing pain lanced through Jeremie's body, staring at his feet and hands and working its way through his limbs and chest until it reached his heart. When the pain finally stopped, he looked down at his hands and screamed.

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

"GAH!"

Jeremie sat bolt upright. Sweat was trickling down his forehead as he sat up, gasping. He let out a sigh of relief as he looked around his room. Everything was still in its place, even the large stack of papers that perched precariously on the edge of his desk.

Down the hall, Odd looked up from his game of Tetris Annihilator.

"Hey, Ulrich. Did you here something?"

"Huh? Sounded like Jeremie screaming." Ulrich muttered, still staring at his hand held's screen. "Must have fallen asleep at his computer again and messed up what he was working on or something."

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

XANA checked the pocket watch he had given himself. It was about 4:37 am. Knowing Jeremie, he'd still be awake right now, typing away on that accursed computer of his…

XANA was standing in front of Jeremie's dorm room. Knowing which one it was and how to get there hadn't been an issue. He had, after all, attacked Jeremie more than once in there. Not something that he would want to bring up in conversation, of course, but still something that needed to be kept in mind.

'Better do it now before he falls asleep.' He mused as he reached for the door.

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

Tap tap tap tap…..

Jeremie had almost (but not quite) fallen asleep when he heard a knock at his door.

Tap tap tap tap…..

'_S'not Jim… Doesn't sound like there trying to break the door down…'_

Jeremie fumbled around for his slippers for a few moments. He could have sworn he had left them around here somewhere….

Tap tap tap tap……

"Coming…." Groaned Jeremie as he walked towards the door.

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

Most former villains would be a little more reluctant to ask for a former enemy's help. Why would they expect to be given any assistance what so ever? How would they convince the people that for so long, perhaps as long as anyone could remember, they had been trying to destroy that they could be trusted and work with them?

XANA knew the answer to both of those questions. He knew that, obviously, Jeremie cared for Aelita as one would care for as sister or, perhaps, even as one would care for a lover. He and Jeremie now had a common enemy to unite them.

When Jeremie's door swung open, the two found themselves staining at each other in the flesh for the first time.

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

At first Jeremie didn't recognize who it was when he answered the door. The teen that stood in front of him looked normal at a glance, but something about him looked off in an oddly familiar way.

"May I come in?" The kid asked, smiling politely.

Jeremie sighed. It was late. Jim could come around the corner any minuet, and he didn't want to think about the kind of trouble he would be in if he was caught talking with a strange kid at this hour in the morning….

"Yes, just try to be quite. If Jim sees you…." He said as he stepped aside.

The kid walked into the room, thanking him for allowing him in at this hour of the night.

Once inside with the door shut, Jeremie turned on his desk light so he could examine new guest. The kid had a few striking features. First of, his har was purple and his eyes where a deep red. Second, he looked enough like Aelita that he could have been her brother. The kid was wearing black cargo pants with red buttons and borders on the pockets, with similar black boots. However, it was the logo on his black shirt which caught Jeremie's attention.

There, displayed in red, was XANA's sign.

"Wh- XANA?! But the repair program wasn't finished! How-" Jeremie stammered as he took a step back, tripping over a box he had left in the middle of the floor.

XANA reached forward and caught Jeremie's wirst and pulled him back to his feat.

"Remember when you where trying to materialize Aelita, Jeremie? Remember how it never could have been done if Aelita hadn't helped you from the inside? In actuality, you would have done it eventually. It would have taken you many, many years, but it would have been done in the end." XANA smiled and let go of Jeremie's wrist.

"I helped your program by directing to the places where damage had been done when I-."

XANA's already pail skin seemed to lose what little color it had.

"When I-"

XANA started to treble..

"When I-"

He sank down onto his knees, his face a mask of horror.

"I-"

'_Did the program miss something?'_ Jeremie worried as he wached XANA as he knelt, trembling, on the floor. Jeremie quickly helped XANA sit on the edge of the bed.

"Jeremie…

"To escape that… thing… that monstrosity you and my creator made together to destroy me, I-

"I had to…

"I tore myself apart."

XANA looked at Jeremie. Where there actually tears running down his cheeks?

"It hurt."

:-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-:

That night XANA slept, or did something like it, on the floor in Jeremie's room.

Jeremie soon fell asleep as well, but he did not sleep peacefully. His dreams where haunted by the same nightmare he had had earlier.

No mater what he did, no mater how hard he tried to change his path, he always found himself in the room with Franz Hopper, staring at clawed, twisted hands of flesh and metal and wire.

Not Hopper's hands, but his own.


End file.
